Hackaday has a long-running series on Mining and Refining, that tracks elements of interest on the human-made road from rocks to riches. What author Dan Maloney doesn’t address in that series is the natural history that comes before the mine. You can’t just plunk down a copper mine or start squeezing oil from any old […]
Many people have looked Death in the eye sockets and survived to tell others about it, but few situations speak as much to the imagination as situations where there’s absolutely zero prospect of rescuers swooping in. Top among these is the harrowing tale of the Apollo 13 moon mission and its crew – commanded by […]
Smartphones boggle my mind a whole lot – they’re pocket computers, with heaps of power to spare, and yet they feel like the furthest from it. As far as personal computers go, smartphones are surprisingly user-hostile. In the last year’s time, even my YouTube recommendations are full of people, mostly millennials, talking about technology these […]
Australia is known for great beaches, top-tier coffee, and a laidback approach to life that really doesn’t square with all the rules and regulations that exist Down Under. What it isn’t known for is being a spacefaring nation. As it stands, a startup called Gilmour Space has been making great efforts to give Australia the […]
Lightning is a powerful force, one seemingly capable of great destruction in the right circumstances. It announces itself with a searing flash, followed by a deep rumble heard for miles around. Intuitively, it might seem like a lightning strike would be disastrous for something like a plane flying at altitude. And yet, while damage is […]
The MOS Technology 6502 is a microprocessor which casts a long shadow over the world of computing. Many of you will know it as the beating heart of so many famous 8-bit machines from the likes of Commodore, Apple, Acorn, and more, and it has retained enough success for a version to remain in production […]
BornHack is a week-long summer hacker camp in a forest on the Danish island of Fyn, that consistently delivers a very pleasant experience for those prepared to make the journey. This year’s version was the tenth iteration of the camp and it finished a week ago, and having returned exhausted and dried my camping gear […]
It should come as no surprise that the hacker community has embraced the Meshtastic project. It’s got a little bit of everything we hold dear: high quality open source software, fantastic documentation, a roll-your-own hardware ethos, and just a dash of counterculture. An off-grid communications network cobbled together from cheap parts, some of which being […]
Those of us who like to monitor air traffic with ADS-B aggregators such as FlightAware and ADS-B Exchange tend to see some interesting flight paths. I’m not talking about the truly ambitious pictures drawn by pilots, or even the more ribald ones, but rather flights that follow paths that seem to make little sense from […]
Today, creating a ground-breaking video game is akin to making a movie. You need a story, graphic artists, music, and more. But until the middle of the 20th century, there were no video games. While several games can claim to be the “first” electronic or video game, one is cemented in our collective memory as […]